And let me just say thank heavens this storm front has rolled into DC finally. First, we need the rain, and second, it’s only 11:45ish and it’s already below 70 in my apartment tonight, meaning I’ll actually be able to sleep well.
It’s welcome to keep raining for the next two days as they’re predicting, too. We need more than that, but it’s a good start, no matter the mess it’s going to make of the commutes.
I like warm weather. I really do. But I like warm weather with air conditioning, if I’ve been acclimated to AC, as I have been the past few years (I survived the subtropics in Taiwan without it). And I have no AC at the moment because the weather is supposed to have broken by now, the cold front hovering over West-by-God-Virginia is supposed to have rolled over by now, and it’s supposed to be cooler than 76 degrees inside my apartment. Pig fucker weather systems.
This is, as you can see, making me testy.
BC and I just got back from 30 Days of Night. Wow. Perhaps it was because we’d gone to Zatinya and each had 2 glasses of wine with dinner and a glass of port as dessert, but that was, um, well, cheesy. And unnecessarily silly. And filled with far too many opportunities to whisper snarky comments in his ear. Not as many as, say, Dragon War, but still. I was left tapping my fingers and wondering when they’d just kill off the people already so I could go home to my overly warm apartment and attempt to sleep.
Annual physical was this morning. BP’s good (105/70?), resting heart rate was good, lungs, clear, etc. All the blood work should come back at the end of the week or beginning of next week. Got a tetanus booster since I couldn’t remember my last one and they had no record of having one at their practice. So far the arm’s not sore, but we’ll see how it goes tomorrow.
Back to work tomorrow after 2.5 days off, so will be email heck to catch up with. I’m sort of ready for it. At least I have massive amounts of candy to carry in for the office, so for that alone I’ll be popular.
I had been thinking about gaming systems, but if my obsession behavior the past two days is any indication of how it would be if I got one, I really, really should not. I picked up the new Zelda game for the DS, and it’s been absolutely fantastic. Some of the elements are a bit slow, but for the vast majority of the game I think they nailed it for my gaming likes. So much so that I’ve been up far, far too late the past two nights playing the game. Only had to revert to guides twice, which is a good sign for me.
Big thanks to the folks who came out on Friday, I had a marvelous time, and it was good to see people. That was precisely the b’day celebration I needed – low key and fun chatting and watching folks chat.
My eldest niece and her mother popped up today to play tourist, so we wandered through the Mall and a few museums. She absolutely loved the Metro. It’s a shame Air & Space is still so disorganized and doesn’t have more hands-on stuff for kids – that’s what she stopped at whenever we were in an exhibit, the ‘I can play with this’ things. She also spent most of the day talking about going to City Lights, my now former favorite Chinese restaurant in town.
The service was, in a word, atrocious tonight. They were busy, that much was readily apparent, but that’s no excuse. No one came by to check on drinks. My niece managed to down her water and her soda fairly early, and even after I specifically asked a server to get her a refill of her soda (even handing him the glass), it never came back. Then I couldn’t manage to flag anyone down because they were all flying by so quickly. The one guy I did finally catch was one of their busboys whose English was somewhat lacking, and unfortunately my Spanish is non-existent, but we did manage to get soda refills, at least, for the niece and her mother. To say I’m miffed would be an understatement – this is a place where the more established wait staff calls me by name, in Chinese, when I come in, so it’s not like I’ve never been there before. Hell, I was lying in bed for about 1/2 an hour just now and all I could do was dredge up much-unused vocabulary for expressing in Mandarin exactly how annoyed I was at the whole thing (and it’s amazing what ancient vocabulary can be dredged up in the service of strong emotions). As it was I did get one of the management staff before we left and let them know that this was the most dismal service I’d ever received there.
Otherwise it’s been a lovely weekend. I’m going to get my newest toy hooked up to the bike tomorrow and head out on a ride with a friend after his bike (re)fitting. Haven’t played with it yet, so this is the inaugural run. Should be interesting to see the data once I’m done.
Thanks to those who wished me well yesterday, I appreciated that.
BC and I went out to Vegetate for a marvelous meal, after he shared a gift or two (the eyelash curlers were a particularly humorous touch, and set the right mood for the evening). Then we came back here and proceeded to polish off a bottle or two of really good wine from the bottom of the rack, cuddle, and watch Mars Attacks, which he’d not seen (he had accused me once again of not having movies with real stars in them – so of course I had to pull out the one movie I have that has pretty much nothing but major actors in it). All in all a wonderful way to end the evening.
Today we were completely lazy and slept in until noon or so, with more cuddling and general gentle treatment of the hangovers we both had from the good wine the evening before. Just back from a nice dinner down at Jenny’s where we were mildly creeped out at the number of spiders hanging out right outside our window. There were two beer signs in the window, attracting a lot of bugs, so the spiders were very active, and very distracting as you’d catch them out of the corner of your eye. Not a place for the arachnophobic. But the tofu dishes we shared were both just incredible (their fiery tofu is fantastic – I almost always order it when I go).
He’s on his way home now, but he’ll be out tomorrow at Cantina, so those who’ve not met him will have a chance to do so if you come out tomorrow evening. Should be a fun time, and hopefully the really, really bad 80s cover band that was playing there this evening won’t be there tomorrow. If they are, we’ll have something other than me to pick on.
One of the side effects of the ‘no exercise’ was a good chunk of not sleeping well (which then fed the lack of desire to exercise, in a lovely vicious circle). I thought, after two days of good workouts, that I’d be back to wanting to sleep at a decent hour, but it appears that this is not to be the case quite yet.
Thankfully the ‘net is always here to amuse when these mood strike.
Was up until 4am. Sleep was not to be found. Then, I was rudely awakened at 8am by the sound of a chipper/shredder taking out the limb that came down Saturday night outside my window. Called work, went back to bed. Just getting up now, and only up because I got hungry. Well, that and the half-awake dreams got really, really fucked up and I couldn’t take them any more.
I even hauled out my neti pot to help clear out my nose. I haven’t used that thing in years. It did do a good job of clearing some stuff out, so I’ll probably see about doing it as a regular practice. I think I got the head position better last night than I have (chin and forehead level – previously I’d had the chin too far down I think) after a lot of insominac reading last night. And hey, if it helps, water and salt are cheap, certainly cheaper than sudafed.
I sense much monster killing today, around napping. And a little bit of work, since I have a meeting with a political appointee tomorrow about his project and how to fund it in a way that doesn’t kill the thing.
The problem with waking up at 4am or so this morning and not being able to immediately get back to sleep is that by the time I was ready to sleep again, it was just about my normal wake-up time, which means my body now wants to get back up again and not sleep more. Yuck. I think I’m staying home today to sleep in.
I feel like I should feel better on a day when I mailed off a check to pay off a student loan (how tempting it was to write on the check: “From hell’s heart I stab at thee. For hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee.”), but I’m just sort of blah. Did manage to get more sleep last night, but still mildly restless. No run this morning, but planning on doing one in the heat this evening instead. Allergies haven’t helped any, either (snot much? thanks).
Work, after being all “ZOMGWTFBBQ!” for the past couple of days was relatively quiet today, with fewer instances of forehead slapping than I’ve had most of this week. I am very, very glad it’s the weekend, though. I don’t think I can handle any more (work) stupidity right now.
Thank you to my f-list folks from MN who checked in to let us know you were okay.
I decided to take a first stab at getting through the backlog of books and magazines I have in the house by cancelling daily delivery of the Post. I only get to skim the paper as it is, and daily comics aren’t worth the hassle. They, of course, tried to do everything they could to keep me on, reminding me of the specialty sections, offering to lower the rate, &c. No dice, switch it back, thanks.
Now maybe I can work through the stack. Since it’s bad when you’re getting your mail and your first thought upon seeing a magazine is “oh look, another magazine I’m not taking the time to read.”
It seems to be the season for folks’ iPods to die, based on my blog/LJ reading. Not to miss out, my heaven-knows-how-old 3rd Generation iPod is currently giving me fits. The battery’s been shot for ages, but that’s not a big deal; I only use it on a platform speaker at work (where it’s charged as it plays) or in a car (where, again, it’s plugged in to charge). I use a 1st generation shuffle (the gum stick sized ones) if I want to listen to stuff while I’m out and about, since for the most part I don’t need to see a screen to listen on the Metro or while out walking, I’m not sitting on Metro that often to need to watch things, and I’d rather lose a hundred dollar piece of equipment than a multi-hundred dollar piece were I, heaven forefend, to get robbed.
So, true to the trend, the connection with the platform speakers at work seems to be cutting in and out, which is very annoying. I just want the current iPod to keep playing as it does now, without needing a real battery, and just as a big hard drive to keep my music. Grr.
Haven’t been sleeping well this week, I think it’s the usual August heat and our AC not quite keeping up. The joys of aluminum architecture. I suspect melatonin is getting ingested this evening as I’m really not ready for another sleepless night, and I really need to be able to train, which doesn’t happen (or doesn’t happen well) when I can’t sleep.
…
There are times I want to talk about work, and times when I’m glad I can’t. Let’s just say that it’s a scary world out there, boys and girls, and leave it at that. And I don’t even get to see the really scary stuff, yet, since my big ole clearance hasn’t come through yet.
Been busy otherwise. BC and I are seeing each other usually once during the week, and then a ton of time on the weekends. He might be buying a house waaaaay out in the ‘burbs, so I shall be investigating transportation options out that way. I know I can bike it, but that’s not so viable when it gets cold out. We’ll see. The joys of not owning a car, sometimes.
Oh, and speaking of such things, I got the payoff info for one of my sub-loans from the more expensive of the two variable rate student loans companies today, so a check is going out tomorrow to pay that puppy off. A minor victory, but a victory I’ll take. Every little step like that is a step closer to being debt-free, and will help accelerate the rate of repayment on these things, so huzzah for that.
It’s dangerous being home with a new(ish) cookbook, a lot of time, and the desire to cook something. I think I went a little nuts about dinner for BC tomorrow. Tomato salad’s done and marinating overnight, and there’s a coffee granita in the freezer and chocolate espresso balls in the fridge. The entree is fairly simple to put together tomorrow night over pasta. Should be a good meal, though I am disappointed my oven’s not reliable enough to bake bread or I’d have done that, too.
So, why home? Because my newbies ran their goal race yesterday up in NJ, and I wanted the extra day for recovery from traveling. It was a fantastic time, everyone finished, and we continued the tradition from last year of one of ours being the last finisher on the course, with yours truly meeting them on the other side of the finish line with their medal.
Glad I took the extra recovery day, it was nice not to have to get up at o-dark-thirty this morning, as I had the previous two days, nice to get in a long run on a Monday, and nice to get out to the grocery store while it was still relatively quiet. Should’ve gone swimming, too, but one can’t do everything. Started the write up for the ride the previous weekend, but not done yet. Have to get that up this week, but not tonight. For now it’s off to bed so I can ride in the morning.